Biggerpan, a startup company which develops a predictive artificial intelligence (AI) technology that anticipates people's needs on mobile, is pleased to welcome Dr. Gregory Grefenstette as Chief Scientific Officer. A world-renowned expert, Dr. Grefenstette brings more than 30 years of experience in the AI industry, and is considered a leading researcher in the field of natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval. In his newly appointed role, he is responsible for driving the continued research and development of Biggerpan's breakthrough technology.

Gregory Grefenstette, Chief Scientific Officer at Biggerpan, Inc.

Biggerpan's mission is to make the Internet smart on mobile by building the first AI that predicts what you want, so you don't have to search. "As we are shifting away from the traditional keyboard and mouse paradigm, people will need to rely more and more on predictive interfaces," said Eric Poindessault, co-founder and CEO at Biggerpan. "Today we target the mobile user experience, where 75% of the Internet use is happening right now, tomorrow think virtual and augmented reality."

Derived from the latest research in natural language processing, a branch of AI which extracts meaning from text, Biggerpan's proprietary technology is able to analyze and understand any web page in real time in order to make the most relevant recommendations. For example, if you are reading an article about a movie, it instantly offers you to watch the trailer or to buy tickets online. Biggerpan's technology takes text comprehension to new heights, as it understands the meaning of each word based on the context of an entire page rather than just the surrounding words, which allows for a more effective disambiguation. It goes further thanks to a unique multi-class entity recognition approach which allows it to identify topics almost instantaneously.

Dr. Grgory Grefenstette joins the team as an authority in natural language processing, as he has continuously been pioneering the fields of cross-language information retrieval and of distributional semantics, the induction and extraction of meaning from large quantities of text. Sought after as a keynote speaker, he is named inventor in 20 granted U.S. patents, has authored and edited four books, and published hundreds of research papers in the most prestigious scientific journals. Dr. Grefenstette previously held chief scientific officer positions at Xerox Research Centre Europe, search engine company Exalead, Clairvoyance Corporation and with the French CEA, and was a senior researcher at numerous top-tier institutions such as INRIA and the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). A graduate from Stanford University, Dr. Grefenstette initially studied mathematical sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later received a PhD in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh.

"Today, the power and capacity of a computer is underused. We can leverage algorithms to provide powerful predictions, avoiding the frustrations of typing and searching on a small device," said Dr. Gregory Grefenstette. "I am excited to be part of a team that is at the forefront of such innovation and look forward to incorporate my years of research into a useful real-world application through the development of this technology."

Dr. Grefenstette now brings an unrivaled level of expertise and experience to Biggerpan. His past work and interests acutely align with the company's forward-thinking vision, fostering ideal conditions for future enrichment of the technology, and overall company success.

"We are very happy to welcome Dr. Gregory Grefenstette to the team," said Eric Poindessault. "As a founding father of modern NLP, his extensive knowledge and experience will accelerate the development of our AI technology and propel us forward in achieving our mission."

ABOUT

Biggerpan is a French-American startup which develops a predictive artificial intelligence that leverages context to make real-time recommendations. The company's mission statement is to build a brain for the mobile web, to allow a better integration of the technology into our lives, without all the pain and frictions that are found in traditional mobile online activities.

The first product released by Biggerpan is Ulli, a smart mobile web browser that simplifies the experience on a mobile device by recommending the most relevant content, services and purchases for people to navigate based on the context of their current browsing. The iOS app was nominated 2016 Mobile App of the Year by Product Hunt and featured on the Emerging Tech Tour at Mobile World Congress 2017.